Do you like what you see in the mirror?
We can all have help from other people to assist us in achieving our goals. But, ultimately, the person most interested in how we get on and most in control of our destiny is us.
Encourage your child to look in the mirror to look at the person who will shape their future. Part of this exercise is to help them identify the traits and feelings of the person they are looking at. Do they have a fixed or a growth mindset?
Sometimes it is handy to have a little checklist of traits – are you one who gives up easily, do you ignore feedback, do you think that making mistakes is a bad thing, do you avoid challenges? If so, then you are currently working with a fixed mindset. Recognising this is positive itself. It means you can now change it. You are the one to choose how you view life and only you can make the change.
If you can help your child to understand how they can make their lives easier by adopting a growth, rather than fixed mindset, then you will be doing them a huge service.
Learning to check in with themselves and identify how they are feeling when they are undertaking a task is a good starting point. Once they recognise any negative feelings they can learn to take action to turn them from negative to positive. This doesn’t mean that everyone will immediately become top grade students, but it does mean they will have the springboard for improvement.
Growth mindset individuals learn from failures, keep going, love a challenge, put in effort to improve, are happy to try another path. Before they even start working, they have placed themselves in a fabulous position. They can look in the mirror and know that the person looking back will absolutely do their best. The challenge, as parents and teachers, is to help our fixed mindset pupils learn how to grow.
Why not put a mirror up with the words ‘This person is in charge of my future’? Understanding from a young age that it is not someone else’s “fault” is a valuable lesson. Not everyone will go on to be a star but everyone can get better.
